


you can't touch sunlight (any more than you can keep it)

by DustyMakesMistakes



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Brainwashing, Implied/Referenced Torture, M/M, Memory Alteration, Past Relationship(s), Sombra (Mentioned) - Freeform, Talon!Jack, listen i don't know how to tag
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-31
Updated: 2020-12-31
Packaged: 2021-03-10 22:48:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,871
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28461147
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DustyMakesMistakes/pseuds/DustyMakesMistakes
Summary: “I’m sure it’s his pleasure to be working with such an astounding agent, Reyes.”Akande assigns Gabriel a new partner, someone he thought he'd lost long ago.
Relationships: Reaper | Gabriel Reyes/Soldier: 76 | Jack Morrison
Comments: 3
Kudos: 41
Collections: Reaper76 Free For All Secret Santa 2020





	you can't touch sunlight (any more than you can keep it)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [seraphy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/seraphy/gifts).



> I'm very _very_ rusty with writing. 2020 ruined my plans to improve on fic writing. Nevertheless, I hope you all enjoy this short piece! Especially to whom this gift is dedicated to. Happy Holidays! <3

“Reaper. I have no doubts your loyalties lie indefinitely with Talon. Your years of servitude have proven that.” Akande circled him, hand gliding across the back of the man’s chair. He’s never really threatened Gabriel at all. He considers him a threat, but he’s nothing compared to what Gabriel has faced. This is, of course, on his own. Akande was a powerful leader, and the way he commanded over people under him always inspired fear.

Right now, Akande was alone. At least, that’s what Gabriel had thought.

“Simple drawbacks. Nothing that would get in the way of Talon’s goals.”

“Ah yes, but you of all people would understand how small mistakes can make great waves. An unfortunate thing, what had happened to Strike Commander Amari. An even more tragic loss, your previous Strike Commander-”

“Your point, Akande?” The man stopped and grinned down at Gabriel, staring into the sockets of his mask.

“I will need eyes on you for a little while. I expect you won’t have any qualms about being watched over for a little while. Think of it as a… necessary precaution. Trust is a tough thing to come by these days.”

Reaper just nods silently as Akande fiddles with his glass. Watches as he calls in the agent assigned as his “partner.”

In steps a man with clean practiced footing. Like one misstep would earn him a whip. He stands opposite the Reaper with his hands behind his back.

Gabriel is seething. Reaper does nothing.

Akande steps up to pat him on the back. “He will keep you company for a time. Understand that you are partners. You work together. Run missions side by side. And for the hypothetical situation when one of you step out of line, well.”

The threat was clear. The wrath in Gabriel’s eyes was clearer. Akande had him like a fish on a hook.

The smooth roads can only last so long. With one last nod to Akande, Gabriel retreats to his room, shuts his door, and hurls a lamp at the wall.

Gabriel had all this planned out. He was willing to play to long game to bring Talon down to its knees. Perhaps have it all go down in flames in the same fashion they blew up the base. It would be warm. Bright.

Nothing like the scorching feeling on his skin seeing _Jack Fucking Morrison_ at the meeting today.

Pale. Dull-eyed. **Alive**.

Albeit, his hair isn’t its golden hue anymore. Nor are his eyes their striking blue. Like they’ve rusted from the years that Gabriel’s left him alone. Sitting there, just within reach, was Jack. Not acknowledging him in any shape or form. He didn’t seem to be acknowledging anything else.

The blood-curdling realization began to sink in the more he looked at him. The realization that whatever he had done before to find Jack had never been enough. That he gave up far too early and sought to avenge a person who was still suffering in Talon’s hands. Damnit, he can see scars on his face he doesn’t recognize.

“I’m sure it’s his pleasure to be working with such an astounding agent, Reyes.”

There’s a knock on his door. Reaper growls and slides the door open himself, startled once again by the presence of another dead man.

Staring back into his own were eyes that didn’t recognize him. The last time he’s ever looked into them, Jack had been hanging from the ship. Sun bearing down at them and the ruins below. Talon right at their tail. Jack slipping from Gabriel’s bloodied arms.

“We have a mission briefing tomorrow, sir.” The voice sends chills up Reaper’s spine.

“Don’t call me that.”

“... We have a mission briefing tomorrow, Reaper.”

Gabriel walks away before he can do anything he’d regret.

Nothing could have occupied his mind more that night. Or any other night. Every time he’d pass Jack standing sentry at the halls or nodding to every command, it gave Gabriel all the more reason to berate himself for his inaction. And how he’s failing to do anything for him now… 

Gabriel had no choice. He had a plan. He needed to stick to it to make sure Talon did this to no one else.

But as expected, it was more difficult than he thought.

“The ship’s been prepped. We’re leaving in 5, Reaper.”

An awful feeling gripped at Gabriel’s heart.

“Mm.”

Conversations end as quickly and as abruptly. Gabriel didn’t want Akande hurting Jack again after the last time they had disappeared during a mission. He didn’t know what to say then. He pulled Jack out of the firefight for no reason other than to try and get some words in with him.

“Here.” Jack catches whatever Gabriel had tossed him, leaving him to guess in his empty head what this cylinder is. Unless Reaper permitted him to ask-

“So I don’t have to patch up your stupid ass out there. Throw it down when you need it.”

Gabriel risks a glance at Jack to see if he’s gotten it, and the man was already stuffing it in the right compartment for later use. Hopefully not for anything serious. It’s a good thing Gabriel didn’t plan on having Jack stay too long in the firefight today.

“ **What happened to you, Morrison.** ”

Blocking the exit, Gabriel had Jack cornered. He wasn’t going to get another chance like this so soon. No cameras, no grunts. Just him and Jack and his long unanswered questions.

“How the hell did you survive the fall?”

There was no time to entertain Gabriel then, and when he had nearly jeopardized another mission to ask him that same question last time, Akande had known about it from Jack himself.

Gabriel learned his lesson after learning Jack had been sent to the medbay.

Since then, downtime’s been chock full of silence.

But as patient as a man Gabriel can be, he is a man all the same. And he was a man who needed answers.

“The target is getting away!”

“Fuck the target, Jack!”

Jack pushes Gabriel back from where he’s held up against the wall, but to little avail. Their scuffle from earlier took much more energy from him than a corpse.

“What do you think you’re doing, Reaper!” Jack barked. Gabriel couldn’t answer. And while Jack struggled against the man, Gabriel could only stare at him. And the longer he looked, the more his tongue tied up and his mind went blank. 

“Sir!”

“Don’t fucking call me that!” The grip tightens on Jack’s uniform. Jack’s hands tighten around Gabriel’s wrists in return. Just as tight as they were trying to hold onto him, trying to keep him from falling from the ship. Trying to keep Talon from taking him away.

Jack continues to try and pull Gabriel away, but whatever memories are playing back in Gabriel’s head are keeping his hands anchored.

It goes on like this for another five minutes or so before Jack finds his opening when Gabriel’s hold loosens. He must be thinking of those last few seconds he had Jack in his arms again. The real Jack. Not this shell.

Well, this shell can _fight_.

They both go down crashing, pushing back at each other. One is throwing a fist. The other can’t pull himself to do anything but take it till he finds a way to slither his hand to that neck and pinch the right nerve.

Jack flops down unconscious onto Gabriel.

_Everything is fucked._

Jack comes to to Gabriel furiously burning footsteps into the carpet, pacing and talking to himself about something along the lines of how “this is a fucking disaster.”

“... figure shit out. I’ll need a path to Los Angeles. Untraced. Think you could-”

He shuts up immediately once he notices his prisoner is awake.

“ _Hablaremos después._ ”

Like clockwork, Gabriel is back behind the mask, and Reaper emerges to address Jack.

“Don’t try getting up.”

No response. Jack’s too busy tugging on the restraints of his arms behind his back. He’s stuck to the wall, not by a chain. Chains, he can break. Gabriel knows that.

The bands around his wrists seem magnetic. Can’t break magnetic fields.

“Can’t break something that isn’t there. Give it up. You’ll bruise yourself.”

“I’ve never known the Reaper to care about the bruises on a prisoner.”

“That’s because you aren’t one.”

“That remains to be seen.”

Gabriel doesn’t seem eager to respond, once again seeming entranced by Jack’s whole existence. It’s the same stillness that had unnerved the soldier since that first meeting. He felt those eyes burn into the back of his head when he turned around to leave that night.

“What do you plan on doing. Talon _will_ find out. Akande will find out, and see to it the appropriate punishments are dished out when they find us.”

“I took care of that.”

“Talon will be two steps ahead.”

“I’ll be 10 more.”

“How can you be so sure Talon will not expend all their resources to find two of their most valued agents.”

Gabriel scoffed. _Most valued agents._ The last conversation they’ve had about that ended up with Jack questioning his loyalties. Not that it matters now.

He’s ready with his next snarky remark but throws it out the window when he finally turns to look at Jack again. Once more, he’s reminded that this is _Jack_ he’s talking to. The banter came so easily, it almost seemed like Talon hadn’t even changed him at times.

There are small things, like the lack of a genuine smile or the presence of an entirely different one when he’s chasing a target down for blood. There are the little reminders he murmurs to keep himself in check. A lack of sympathy for anyone around him.

And then there are times like these when he acts so much like Jack that it physically hurts to look and see that this isn’t the golden boy Gabe was so fond of before because it isn’t him anymore. He feels like him. But Talon’s dug itself deep into his head, and whether it’s out of fear or obedience, Jack remains devoted to them.

He pulls his gaze away before he does anything rash.

“I’m not.”

With that, Gabriel starts packing up and clearing the hotel room as best he can, gets on the comms with someone again. Everything goes by in a blur for him, and in the next second, they’re in his ship once more, off to their next hiding spot.

He doesn’t get anywhere with Jack yet. Mostly because he keeps putting off asking questions.

It’s busy doing this, supposed to do that. Jack doesn’t even think Gabriel has a motive to keep him captive anymore. He isn’t extracting information from him. He isn’t contacting Talon for any sort of exchange. He’s just hopping them from place to place, hunting Jack down whenever he’d try to escape.

At this point, Jack figures Reaper either has this under control or Talon just wasn’t trying hard enough to find them. It didn’t even feel like Talon was coming for them. He didn’t know whether to feel relieved or disturbed.

In the very least, Gabriel was able to find out just how much of Jack they were able to get rid of. In one very specific aspect.

Out of the blue, while camping in the middle of a goddamn forest, Jack begins to hum along to a very familiar tune. One that turned Gabriel’s bones to ice. He couldn’t believe his ears for a single second.

Jack was humming to Besame Mucho. A rather specific song to be humming in Gabriel’s presence.

Naturally, Gabriel couldn’t keep himself from keeping quiet either.

“Where’d you hear that?”

The night goes silent again.

“Hear what?”

“That song you were humming just now.”

“I wasn’t.”

Gabriel frowned behind his mask and stood from his log.

“That song. You were humming. Where did you hear that.” He questioned, approaching Jack with heavy steps.

“I told you I wasn’t humming.”

“ **Jack.** ”

“I don’t know!” He finally yelled, standing up to Gabriel again. “You’d think I’d hear it somewhere from all the time we’ve been jumping from place to place-”

“I wouldn’t have let that play anywhere near us.”

“Then I don’t know!”

The thing that stops Gabriel from pressing further is how, for the first time, Jack begins to actually show how lost he is. His brow is doing that little crease thing that his partner always loved to point out. His one foot is restless, waiting to just start running in one direction before going another. He wants to pace back and forth as Gabriel always does. But most recognizable of all is how his eyes finally shift, unfocused.

Jack had always been staring right ahead at a wall or a target. His rusted eyes always zeroed in on the most important thing in sight. But right now…

Right now, they seemed to be avoiding that one thing. The threat of a man about to interrogate him again. He’s looking anywhere else but the single object of focus in this damn woods.

So Gabriel backs off, letting the tension go in his shoulders. He sits back down on the log and reports back to whoever was on the other end of the comm line. Jack does the same, though one thing is clear. What had happened had confused them both. The only difference is that Gabriel recognizes the progress being made.

In a year and a half, the newly formed Overwatch had begun making leaps and bounds on the way to destroying Talon for good. Gabriel would know. He burned down two bases for him.

But that was too small a victory for him. There were other things he liked to celebrate instead.

Like how, for the first time, Jack didn’t run when his restraints had been removed. How he picked up that delicate field mouse in local farmland. How much less stiff he became as the years went by.

Though nothing like the Jack Gabriel used to know, his “prisoner” had been making his own leaps and bounds on the road to recovery.

Gabriel didn’t think it’d be that easy. All he had to do was keep the man away from Talon as long as he possibly could.

Soon enough, Gabriel would find himself in the middle of some playful banter with Jack, arguing over whether the rabbit would be stewed or roasted. Over who a small butterfly would land on first. Over who looked better in black. Gabriel had to give it to him. Jack looked good in black.

“You know, I had never thought to look up.”

Gabriel turns from his holopad to Jack, who is gazing upwards through the clearing from the trees and outward to the dark open sky.

“I think this is the first time I have gazed upon the stars.”

They’re both lost in the moment. One bedazzled by the twinkling sky above him, the other by the fascination and wonder in Jack’s eyes.

It had been Jack that introduced Gabriel to astrology. He pointed out the constellations he knew by heart and spoke about the late nights he would spend on the rooftop of his Indiana home. Now, it was Gabriel’s turn. He walks up closer to sit on Jack’s log and points up to the sky.

“Ursa Major. Ursa Minor. Orion…”

It’s the first time they allow each other to bump shoulders.

Gabriel knew things were going far too smoothly for this to warrant a happy ending. He was a complete idiot to think those were still within reach.

He stood face to face with dozens of Talon forces surrounding him, Akande directly in front of him. All guns were trained on him, ready to fire at the drop of a hat. The biggest threat of all was Jack, standing right next to Akande, eyes steely and zoned in on him again, gun raised.

They were so close. One misstep in communication and Overwatch landed in the wrong place at the wrong time, leaving him and Jack vulnerable.

“Jack-”

“You could have known better, Gabriel. But I suppose love blinds us all, doesn’t it?” Akande lets out a laugh that is accompanied by a hand patting Jack on the shoulder. Like a proud father teaching his son to hunt game.

“What a shame. You and Jack could have been Talon’s best.”

Gabriel’s too busy pleading with Jack to listen to that bullshit. Four whole years seemed to go down the drain in the blink of an eye.

Had Jack really changed? Or had he also been willing to play the long game?

Unanswered questions began to bubble up to the surface again, making it difficult to breathe.

The clock ticks slowly, Akande’s monologue blurring into the background. Every soldier around him turned into one dark background. A frame for Jack and Gabriel. A picturesque snapshot of their final goodbye. Gabriel always had a love for drama.

Here, Gabriel wasn’t ready to surrender. He’d fight this losing battle if it gave him a sliver of a chance to save Jack.

But Jack had other plans. It was his turn to save Gabriel.

Drawn out of Jack’s pocket was a single biotic field.

**Author's Note:**

> Anyone else love ambiguous endings?
> 
> Twitter and Tumblr: dxstyshclf


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